


Pull down the future

by gloss



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Consent Issues, Dubious Consent, Episode: s03e06 Band Candy, Ethan Rayne more like deus ex machina, M/M, Marking, Post-Series, no comics canon, sex magic magic sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-29
Updated: 2012-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-13 03:57:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody wants a taste of Devon.</p><p>Contains consent issues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pull down the future

**Author's Note:**

> Post-series; no comics canon whatsoever. 
> 
> For my sweet Eccentrici's birthday; also, the "possession/marking" square on my **kink_bingO** [card](http://gloss.dreamwidth.org/125904.html). Beta by L.; title from Television's ["See No Evil"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7L0IYPXKj8), which is Devon's song if there ever was one.

> I'm runnin' wild with the one I love  
>  I see no evil  
>  I'm runnin' wild with the one-eyed ones  
>  I see no evil  
>  Pull down the future with the one you love  
>  Pull down the future  
> 

On a shabby side street in a down-at-the-heels neighborhood of Portland on a dripping, never-quite-raining late afternoon when the light slants low and silvery and the leaves shine emerald, the white rental hatchback slows to a crawl. Hands restlessly stroking and drumming the wheel, the driver peers at house numbers across the street, his passenger at those to the right. Finally, the car pulls up in front of the second to last house on the block, a ramshackle heap wreathed in porches and strewn with bulging windows. The car's occupants make their way up to the house in a straggly line.

The tallest and oldest of the three pauses on the porch. His hand moves in a quick, palm-up motion as he mutters a rapid spell. He waits, as if for a report, the proceeds to the door.

Before the visitor can knock, the door flies back and the screen door bangs open. His hand hovers in mid-air as the occupant, lanky and naked save for a poorly-buttoned Aran cardigan, reaches out and grabs him, hauling him in for a kiss. Their chests bump together.

"Dude!" Devon lets him go, licking his lips. "Been how long? Back for seconds after all this time?"

"I--I beg your pardon?" Giles realizes his hand is still raised to knock, and lowers it slowly.

"Oh my god," Dawn says from behind Giles.

"I don't know this man!" Giles protests.

"Yeah, right." Devon winks outrageously. "So, you're here for Oz? C'mon in --"

Devon stands aside, gesturing them into the house. He really is quite naked beneath that jumper; Dawn hugs the opposite wall as discreetly as she can.

" _Devon?_ " Xander lopes up the steps from the sidewalk. He pauses on the porch, clutching a pillar. "Wait, Oz is here? My Oz?"

"Squeeze me?" Devon shakes a lock of hair out of his eyes. "Nah, _my_ Oz."

"Oz." Xander extends his arm, hand about five feet off the ground. "Little guy, bad bark, worse bite?"

"Well --" Giles peers into the dim apartment. "I suspect some explanations are in order on both sides."

Devon shrugs, which raises the sweater's droopy hem, exposing his cock and balls.

Xander tries not to look, but it's like not thinking about pink elephants. There they are, pink and enormous and.... "Right!" he says loudly and takes the rest of the stairs two at a time. "Let's get to the expositioning, that's always my favorite part."

*

"Turns out dingoes really _did_ eat her baby, so that kind of sucks for me," Devon concludes, finishing off his beer and leaning back in a huge club chair that is belching stuffing and springs in all directions. "What about you guys? What've you been up to?"

He has talked for well over an hour. Halfway through, he thought to offer them something to eat, so Xander and Dawn are sharing a bag of Fritos while Giles sips reluctantly from a can of PBR. With each sip, he shudders a little harder than the last time.

No one hears the steps in the hallway; only Dawn, on the couch next to Xander, sees the slight figure hesitating on the threshold. She elbows Xander, who jumps to his feet, spilling the last of the chips and knocking into Devon's legs.

"Oz!" Xander shouts and gets halfway across the room before it seems to occur to him that he doesn't exactly have anything else to say. He stuffs his hands into his pockets and rocks back on his heels. "You're here."

Oz lets his messenger bag slide off his shoulder and thud to the floor. He takes in the strange group and nods a few times, lips pursed. "And you're all here, too. In my living room. Drinking my beer."

Giles splutters a cough and sets down the can. "It's all yours, really, so sorry, please take it back. _Please_."

"Dev?" Oz asks. "Could I talk to you for a sec? Out here?"

"Nah." Devon stretches like a cat, cracks his neck, then settles back into the depths of his chair. He pats the arm. "C'mere and gimme sugar."

Oz inhales. Xander tries to move backwards back to the couch, but runs into Giles and ends up on the floor. Something appears to loosen within Oz; he lets out his breath, runs his hand back through his hair, and smiles as he settles down next to Devon.

"Hey," he says. "Sorry. Long time no see."

Devon elbows him. "Rude. He can _half_ see, right, Harris?"

Xander's fingers make it halfway to the strap on his eyepatch before he grabs back his hand. "Something like that, sure."

The silence that lands in the center of the room and grows, inexorably expanding, until no one is quite looking at anything in particular and everyone is sharply aware of their fingernails, is something to behold. Respect, even, in all its awesome, gruesome gravid volume.

Devon doesn't respect much at all, however. Eventually he tunes back into the (lack of) conversation and assembled company. Grabbing Oz around the shoulder, pulling him up against his chest, he says in a stage whisper, "Told you I wasn't bullshitting about doing the librarian."

Dawn and Xander are both looking at Giles, who looks like he dearly wishes he could clean his glasses. "I don't know him!"

"Well," Devon says and unfolds, leaning toward Giles, like a spotlight, "you didn't see much of my _face_ , now did you?"

It's hard to know when Devon's bullshitting and when he's being honest. Easier to assume it's all bullshit and work from there: that has been Oz's policy since _at least_ third grade.

Oz pulls one leg up and tilts his head, eyes flicking back and forth between Devon and Giles. "Guess not."

*

The night was humming, and so was Devon. He'd never seen Sunnydale so alive, crackling with energy and boisterous shouts. It was almost like a real town tonight. People were out in full force, overrunning the Bronze and dancing in the middle of the street, while cars dragged themselves bumper-to-bumper on a slow mating crawl as drivers and passengers checked each other out, shouting greetings, gesturing lewdly.

 _This_ was Devon's kind of night.

It was a little weird that the car stereos were blaring Fleetwood Mac and Wings songs, not Barenaked Ladies or Madonna, but maybe it was Retro Weekend. He didn't particularly care; he had a bounce in his step, two nickelbags in his back pocket, and a cool sixty bucks he'd scrounged up from his sister's hiding place.

Around his neck he wore a brand new choker, all glinting silver and sunny orange stone. It came with some kind of Sex CharmTM that the hot wizard who'd sold it to him swore would heighten his usual powers of awesome to untold levels of irresistibility.

"Sh'yeah," Devon snorted when the guy -- sort of a cross between Dr Frank N. Furter and Keith Richards -- claimed that. "And monkeys might fly out my butt."

(He didn't give a shit what anyone said; _Wayne's World_ quotes were never, ever going to get old or go out of style. He fully expected to be forty years old and sitting down in his private screening room in his mansion in Bel-Air with an eighteen year old hottie on each arm to watch the first cut of _Wayne's World XIV_.)

"Charming as that image certainly is," the wizard said, his voice all silky and lush and _BBC_ , "I stand by my wares. Go on. Test it."

"What, on you?"

"My dear boy," he replied, "I'm already yours, trust me."

Devon grinned and adjusted his hair. The choker felt great on his throat, just tight enough not to forget about, but not so tight he couldn't breathe. You wanted your jewelry to be like a good pair of jeans: show off all the good shit, not get in the way of more fun.

"What about him?" the wizard asked, pointing down the street. His eyelashes, Devon noticed, were inky-black, almost as long as Cordy's or Oz's. Damn long. Pretty.

"Huh?"

"Try the charm on the least likely candidate," he said, "and then tell me whether you doubt me."

"Him, huh?" Devon studied the guy in question. He looked vaguely familiar, like maybe a janitor or a teacher at school, but he was in jeans and a t, a cigarette on his lips. For a senior citizen, his body was pretty tight. "Him."

"Go on," the wizard said. His hand settled on the small of Devon's back, his fingers drawing quick swirls. After a moment, he swatted Devon's ass and pushed him along. "You can do it."

And that was how, with a jewel at his throat and a stinging ass, a song in his head and a grin on his lips, Devon managed to pick up the librarian.

Well, "pick up" wasn't exactly how it went down. It was quicker than that, which Devon appreciated, because talking was stupid when you could be kissing, and kissing was stupid when you could be fucking.

"Yeah," the librarian sneered, sucking in on his unfiltered butt, then flicking it at Devon's feet in a shower of sparks. "Yeah, you'll do. You'll do just fine."

He grabbed Devon by the arm and they were making out by the time they hit the next street, hands and tongues gone wild as the rest of the night. When they were safely inside -- the ladies' room of all-night bus stop's coffee shop, because however wild the night was, no sane Sunnydaler stayed outside longer than he had to.

The old guy kissed like he almost wanted Devon dead. Almost dead, not all the way, but loose and weak and desperate. Not limp; he was harder than marble, than a pop quiz in Spanish, than the chord progressions in a Bowie song. He ground himself against the guy's thigh, gasping, and tried to wriggle up for a better angle.

For that, he got his hands pushed back, up over his head, wrists flattened against the wall. Devon kept grinding as the guy bit his way down Devon's throat, sucking on the choker charm before shoving his face down the past Devon's open collar.

"Turn around," he growled, and Devon didn't have a chance to comply before he was being lifted and turned, cheek and chest and cock shoved against the wall. "Open up --"

Did he mean legs? Pants? What? Devon would've asked, if he cared, if he had the breath to speak, but soon enough there were hands on his belt, tugging open his pants, and a knee between his legs, kicking them apart. He writhed against the sticky, gross tile of the wall, which was rapidly warming to match his skin temperature, and sucked at the air like a goldfish.

"Still, you," the kinky old bastard hissed, right in his ear, before biting the side of his throat.

Devon hadn't been still for longer than a moment since pre-kindergarten. He wasn't about to start now, not with big calloused hands running up and down his sides, his jeans catching around his thighs and a cock grinding up against his ass.

"Fuck off," he managed to get out, then arched his back and ground backward.

"Good boy --"

"Yeah, okay," Devon said, grinding and thrusting; the old guy had one hand on Devon's hip, the other on his cock as he fucked Devon's thighs, and it was weird but good -- who ever said no to some good roughhousing and sweaty friction? Not Devon, that's for sure, and teeth in his shoulder and a skull knocking against his own set him off-balance just enough, just right, showers of sparks across his nerves and torques of gravity lifting him nearly out of his shoes, that he came, hard, splattering the wall and crying out a little when the guy kept stroking his dick.

"Stay. Still."

"Whatever, don't break a hip back there --"

He slammed Devon into the wall at that, grabbing both his hips and hauling his ass up and back. Two-three huffs of breath and slick slappy sounds, and he shot onto the small of Devon's back, then smeared it in.

*

"And that," Devon tells the room, "is how I invented the Sex Magic(TM) tattoo."

"Which isn't actually a thing," Oz comments.

"Totally a thing," Devon replies. "Who made up cum catchers? Tramp stamps? Moi. This guy, right here. That's right."

Xander and Dawn don't know where to look. They shuffle their feet and fix their cuffs, the hems of their shirts, their shoelaces.

Giles has his face in his hands. His shoulders are slumped, his back rising and falling very slowly with measured, deliberate deep breaths.

*

He remembers it all, suddenly, perfectly, irrevocably. The facts of the memory click into place like a slide in the projector; one moment, he was innocent, the next, he remembers _everything_.

Giles fully intended to fuck this boy senseless -- though, given the boy's ditzy mellowness, perhaps "senseless" was not that far off. No matter.

He was a long trill of honey, twisting under Giles, sweat and muscle and smooth golden skin working hard, sweet and sticky and irresistible. He had his forehead on one forearm, open mouth gasping at the floor while he pushed back to ride the thrusts. Sweat had darkened the curls at the nape of his neck; they were salty-bright to Giles's tongue. His skin took teeth like it was made for biting, red-pink welts blooming on gold.

He writhed against Giles, needy and insistent, talking shit in his airheaded drawl, daring and insulting: "That all you got, old man? Arthritis, huh? Shame --"

Giles had been seeing double all night. He knew very well he was not nineteen again, yet he was a bystander to his own vicious impulses, incapable of stopping, heedless of consequences.

Not was he some decrepit, half-senile old wreck.

The boy's thighs were clamped around Giles's cock, the skin there impossibly smooth and slick with sweat and ejaculate. Pulling away was a wrench, frigid air and sharp pain, but now his ass rose before Giles, round and firm, the cleft dark pink and shining. Giles thrust several more times against the crack, into his fist. He bit his lip bloody to keep from shouting as he shot against the small of the kid's back, coming hard at the sight of his spunk spattered and clinging there. Marked the boy like an animal, like a monster, and rubbed it in, made sure it stuck.

*

"So," Oz says, "I guess somehow in the ways of the weird and wacky that's why you're here? All...of you?"

Xander opens and closes his mouth, again and again. Although the room is dark, his cheeks are darker, brick red; he ducks his head and looks away.

This leaves Dawn to reply. She straightens up and squares her shoulders. "We're looking for Ethan Rayne."

"Figured as much," Oz says. "But last I heard, he was with Buffy's Army pals."

"Who's Ethan Rayne?" Devon demands. When no one answers right away, he waves his hand. "Fuck it, never mind."

"Locator spells and some cartographic magicks suggested a locus here in Portland," Dawn continues. "Giles and I were working on refining the spells --"

"Who's Reethan Ayne?" Devon asks.

"-- and Xander didn't have anything to do," Dawn says, at which Xander salutes.

"Anyone? Fine, fucking ignore me, like I care." Devon rolls his eyes and pushes himself to his feet, dislodging Oz; with practice born of experience, Oz rights himself gracefully. "Okay, well. I'm ordering food. Everyone in? Visitors paying? Good, great."

"He's sulking," Oz says when Devon has banged out of the room.

"No -- as they say -- shit, Sherlock," Giles says, finally lifting his head and giving everyone a wan smile. "It seems we have miscalculated, and I am terribly sorry to have disturbed you, though delighted, of course, to have run into --"

Xander puts his hand on Giles's shoulder and shakes him gently until he shuts up. "What Giles means is, obviously Ethan's not here." He looks around. "He's not, right?"

"You can check under the bed if you want."

Giles half-laughs at that, then squints, as if he's actually considering the merits of the suggestion.

Dawn clears her throat. "I don't think it's a mistake. I think Devon's the map. Or, like. A milestone at least."

She and Giles set to arguing about that. She doesn't argue with him like Willow used to; she's much more direct and confident in stating her convictions, but the fierceness on both sides is just the same. Devon's Korean burritos arrive, and Xander uses Giles's Visa to pay.

Three bowls of kimchi and several more beers later, Devon is mollified and back to being amenable to just about anything.

Before very long, Devon is stretched out on a makeshift platform of coffee table and army footlocker. He insisted on being naked, though both Dawn and Giles reassured him it was completely unnecessary. Candle light plays over his skin while Giles and Dawn invoke the djinns of seeking and the fae of wayfinding.

"Just ask Siri," Devon suggests. The burning sage makes him cough harder than skunky weed.

Pretty soon, tummy full and brain bored, he falls asleep, snoring softly. Then they can really get to work.

Dawn yelps happily when her invocation tugs at the light, swirling over Devon before gathering at his neck and shooting upward. It hovers near the ceiling, a golden egg-shaped brightness before cracking apart and spilling images over them. The images are made of light, trembling in thin air like the reflections thrown up off water's surface. They fall apart like pages from a broken book.

Somewhere, there's the sound of a man laughing. Giles frowns and mutters Ethan's name bitterly before he and Dawn start corraling the slips of light and examining them. One should not be able to touch light, but with care, they manage to right and arrange the slippery images.

"This is...is this everyone he's ever slept with? This is like a million people!" Dawn says eventually. "Eww, _Harmony_?"

"We knew that," Xander says. "Not to argue with the 'eww', but --"

"Vamp Harmony," Dawn says and no one can say anything to that. "And a...Giles, what is this, is this a Fyarl?"

Giles coughs and lets an image slip from his hands so he can busy himself with retrieving it from beneath the coffee table.

"Clearly some sort of marking spell," Giles says, not meeting anyone's eyes, "Ethan's work, I've seen cruder versions when we --. A long time ago. But this is _remarkable_ , an entire sexual and romantic history..."

Xander has been picking at the messy remains of his second burrito. When Oz abruptly stands up and leaves the room, Xander waits for Giles and Dawn to notice. They have their heads bowed together, studying something on Dawn's laptop, so Xander eases himself to his feet and quietly follows Oz.

He finds him on the porch, leaning against one of the pillars, mouth set in a hard line.

"Hey," Xander says. "You --"

"Sorry," Oz says. He doesn't sound all that sorry. "Just --." He rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck. "Air. Needed some."

"You okay?" Xander asks, like it's any of his business.

"Yeah. No." Oz squints out toward the street. "Feeling weird. Possessive. But -- not."

"Maybe it's the wolf," Xander suggests. It can't be easy, even if you're as mellow as Oz, to hear about your boyfriend's escapades in front of everyone. Or, that is, one particular magic-warped escapade.

"Nah. Pretty sure it's the Oz."

"Yeah," Xander says. He grasps the railing with both hands and rocks himself back and forth. "I hear you."

The quiet between them stretches out into a choppy, anxious thing, cut through with undertows and sudden drops.

"So, Sunnydale," Oz says after a long, long time. "Your folks make it out okay?"

"Yeah, yeah. They're down in Phoenix now." Xander scrubs his hand through his hair. "What about you? Your mom get out?"

Oz frowns a little. The streetlight picks out, deepens, the folds. "Yeah. Well. She went to L.A., so."

Xander exhales slow as a leaky bike tire. "Frying pan, fire," he says, then winces at the insensitivity. Whatever Angel had unleashed there was still burning; almost ten years on and no one had gotten south of Bakersfield. Satellite photos, when they came through, were smears of inferno-level heat. "I mean --"

When Oz turns to look at him, the light only lands on the edge of his jaw and cheekbone. The rest of his face is dark as anything, so when he smiles, Xander nearly jumps. He does smile back, though, and that seems to loosen and lighten whatever shitty tension has been dragging them down.

"It's okay," Oz says after a bit and Xander claps him on the shoulder.

"Man --"

Oz grasps his elbow and hauls him into a hug. "Good to see you."

He feels just like Oz ever did: small and sturdy and surprisingly, reassuringly, strong. Xander wraps his arms around him and doesn't think about letting go.

*

The magic diffuses slowly, irregularly. Around the coffee table, it's still strong enough to make Oz bristle and want to show his teeth, but elsewhere in the living room, there's nothing but the old familiar scent of him and Devon, beer and pizza, weed and silk.

Giles turns down his offer to let them stay the night; the couch opens to a double bed, but they already have hotel reservations downtown. "I, I don't think Dawn would appreciate having to share --"

She's packing up her laptop and coiling the cord. Devon's been trying to steal peeks at her records, and she shoos him away like she's been doing it for years. "You snore anyway."

"I beg your pardon!"

Xander rocks side to side, gently banging against Oz's arm. When Oz takes his hand, he flexes it before threading their fingers together. "I, uh. Think I'm going to stay?"

Dawn grins at him while Giles gets very interested in doing up his raincoat.

"Fuck, _yeah_ ," Devon says suddenly, backing into the room with a six-pack dangling from one hand. "Harris! Cutting the apron strings."

"That doesn't make any sense," Dawn tries to say but Devon shushes her.

"Well," Giles says and goes to shake Devon's hand. Devon stares at the proffered palm and shrugs before bowing and kissing Giles's knuckles. "Oh. Oh, my."

"Good to see you again, man," Devon says. "Wish we could've, like. You know." He does not finish the thought. Instead, he waggles his eyebrows and licks his lips ridiculously.

"Yes, well, I --" Giles discreetly wipes the back of his hand on his coat. "I am sorry. I was not in anything like a healthy frame of mind --"

"Should get like that more often." Devon slips in between Xander and Oz, slinging his arms around their shoulders. "Everybody needs to howl at the moon once in a while."

No one knows how much, or how little, Devon ever means. It's one of his greatest charms.

*

He would say, of course, that his _biggest_ charm is his dick. He wouldn't be wrong, either.

The next morning, Xander wakes groggy and a little sore, lips raw and eyes gummy. He extricates himself from beneath Oz's arm and, sitting up, sees Devon splayed out on his stomach, drawing on Oz's lower back.

Devon glances up and grins lazily in the lemony morning light. He shades in the puffy balloon letters -- **D.M.** \-- before looking back up at Xander.

"Just sharing the magic," he whispers. "The _sex_ magic, that is."

"TM?" Xander asks, swinging his feet onto the floor and pausing for a moment to get his balance back.

Devon slaps his hand. "T-fucking-M, yeah."

When Xander climbs into the shower stall later, he sees his own Sharpie'd tattoo in the mirror, high on his left hip.

Magic's power, he knows, is more than 99% belief. More than anything, Devon _believes_.

 

[end]  



End file.
